Tarifa, 5th October 2012
Naturally, on my last day there was hardly a breeze blowing. Should I put my backpack into storage and go out again?

No. The hostel was too unwelcoming. Unlike any other I’d stayed in during this trip they didn’t even offer storage. Rather the signs on the walls proclaimed—in no uncertain terms, and in both English and Spanish—that check-out was by 10:30 at the latest: you and your luggage!.

The bus station didn’t have any left-luggage facilities either.

Part of me thought I should try the firmm office, but then I thought better of it. Talk about being unprofessional.

Mistake? To be sure…

But you know me by now, don’t you? I spent another three minutes vacillating, then shouldered my backpack and marched back to the hostel a toda prisa as they say in Spain. Luckily the place was only about 7 minutes from the bus station, on the way into town. The receptionist grudgingly agreed that I could leave my bag, provided I paid 2€ upfront. I kept hopping from foot to foot and popped a Valium while she went on with her cleaning. When I followed her into the courtyard she finally relented and led me to the first floor where she locked the backpack into a shower stall. One thing that can be said about the hostel was that it had a lot of showers.

“Come back soon,” she said and I hurriedly assured her that I would be back around noon.

By now it was almost 9:40 and I marched to the harbour to find the meeting point devoid of people. The first trip would not leave before twelve.

Oh no! My flight wasn’t until the evening, but buses from Tarifa are a rarity. Having missed the 9:30, the next bus would leave at 11:50 and after that times were a little hazy. There was only one thing for it: march straight back to the bus station to check the timetable.

At this time I almost wished that it had been windy and this dilemma would never have arisen. I wished for it even more when I arrived to find the bus station closed. I could see the timetables through the glass door. My binoculars (which turned out to have many surprising uses) brought them tantalisingly close. But they were at an angle and I could not read them.

What now? The station might open again at eleven, but by then the trip might have sold out. I stood—binoculars in hand—pondering what to do next when a man in a green striped COMES shirt and tie stepped up and gave me a strange look.

“I was just having a coffee,” he said.

And I was able to check that—yes—I should be able to make the 15:30 bus to Algeciras and connect with the 16:30 bus to La Linea, hopefully getting to the airport by 17:30, if I did not get get frisked at the border. Failing that, the 16:55 would go directly to La Linea, but that would be cutting it mighty fine.

This was one of those days. If I decided not to go there would be orcas and sperm whales and even migrating finwhales in addition to all the dolphins and long-finned pilot whales that are resident in the strait. The last time I’d seen pilot whales was on my trip to Bilbao, more than seven years ago, and I missed them.

On the other hand, if I stayed the wind might pick up, we’d all get drenched and I’d miss my flight.

But Nina at the firmm reception assured me that conditions would remain calm, so I parted with my last 30€. My multiple-trip discount meant that I received just about enough change for my bus tickets.

Bay of Algeciras, 3rd October 2012
I’d been watching the wind forecasts for days, and finally it looked like conditions in the Strait of Gibraltar were calming down. My mind was made up. I left Malaga and made straight for Tarifa where—weeks earlier—a persistent sea state of 3-4 put paid to my plans to go whale watching.

Most of the cetaceans here are concentrated in the middle of the strait where common dolphins, striped dolphins, bottlenose dolphins and pilot whales are frequently encountered, as well as orcas (who follow the bluefin tuna and have developed a knack of nicking it straight off the fishing lines, to the chagrin of the Moroccan fishermen in their tiny boats), and also sperm whales and the odd fin whale that might be passing through. So it was with great expectations that we set out. But there are forecasts and then there are actual conditions. Not for nothing is Tarifa known as one of the kite-surfing hotspots in Europe.

The wind picked up steadily and after getting thoroughly drenched without seeing as much as a fin, the good people at firmm (the Foundation for Information and Research on Marine Mammals) promised us another outing, this time departing from Algeciras to see the dolphins in the bay (no pilot whales or orcas there, but I remember the wonderful experience I had when I first came to Gibraltar in 1987).

So we set off in convoy, with a kind English-Dutch couple giving me a lift in their car. As we crossed the hills into Algeciras the wind died down and the harbour lay baking in the sun. We boarded the FIRMM Fly Blue and set out into the calm waters of the bay with gentle waves rippling the surface. The sea state was 2—almost perfect.

Sweeping with my binoculars I half expected to see dolphins leaping in the distance, but it wasn’t until we drew level with the tip of Gibraltar that the guide pointed out the first group of common dolphins—and there was no need for the binoculars because we were nearly on top of them! In fact we were on top of them as two to three individuals swam directly underneath the bow, twisting and turning and darting from side-to-side.Continue reading this entry »

Chinese-Western fusion cooking sounds like a recipe for disaster, but I had an idea for a warm seasonal dish that relies on local ingredients and exotic spices and captures the spirit of my recent up-and-downs in China and the UK: Tea-and-cider-poached roast duck with caramelised apples and pears & mustardy cabbage.

Sounds like a mouthful? That’s because it is. I have often wanted to cook tea-smoked duck but decided that I’d better not get the fire brigade involved, and the weather is decidedly too cold for outdoors cooking at this time of year. In fact, Shanghai and London share the same temperatures today (14-15o during the day, around 7o at night—it gets cold in Shanghai too).

So I thought I’d experiment with duck poached in tea and then roasted. A spice glaze added before roasting would boost flavour and warmth and, since duck partners well with fruit, I decided to add cider to the mix and serve it with caramelised apples and pears. Mustardy cabbage struck me as a good counter-balance to the richness of the meat and sweet, buttery fruit.

With regard to the latter, it is important not to make this dish too sweet. Duck is already sweet but is mostly served with tooth-achingly gooey sauces or glazes. I halved the sweetness content of this recipe and made sure that the sugar was caramelised to the point of bitterness before adding the fruit, but your mileage may vary. As for flavouring, I used whatever was to hand: a number of ancient Oolong tea bags with a best-before date back in 2005 and a few drops of lemon essence stood in for the Earl Grey tea used in the original recipe.

*This entry has been called ‘Excess Expectations’ for ages. And I call myself an English teacher? Ouch.

Whenever I travel I usually look with disdain at expat enclaves, shut off from local life, their denizens mingling only at work or when playing tourist on their off-days. But it is amazing with what speed things can change when you take a suitcase along instead of a backpack, move into an actual flat and hang your office garb up in the wardrobe.

At that moment you enter a dual existence, and I have found out that living a dual existence can be dangerous for those of us who are not either bi-cultural or superheroes with secret identities, or else have a very solid social base (hence the enclaves). This is because the two worlds will clash and the expectations of one will run up against the demands of the other. And this can affect a person’s sanity.Continue reading this entry »

The Longjing tea that is grown in Zhejiang Province is the most famous tea in all China. The original bushes were fed by the still and clear water of the Dragon Well, and maybe one of these days I will get to taste this water for myself.

I’m in shock. This blog has just eaten a post of mine, after I pressed ‘preview’. This has never happened in all the years that I have blogged on this site. I think it is telling that I haven’t used a text editor to write my entry, but have relied on the site as I always do. But no longer. I am deeply disappointed in Bootsnall and more than a little annoyed that my time has been wasted in this way.

If you want to hear about TEFLing and my travels in China, updates can be found on my Life Journal, where I will also post any links to websites I may be able to run from within China.

Anyway, I’m almost done with the prep. I’ve developed a headache from playing Chinese character games and working through almost a hundred newbie lessons in Mandarin and downloading lesson plans and activities whenever there was time. Today the school has emailed me to say that the papers are on their way.

This means that next week may well be my last in the UK. I’ll attend a novel workshop, a graduation ceremony for two friends (incidentally I might receive my own certificate after belatedly graduating in absentia) and I’m hoping for a BBQ. Not to forget shopping for a suitcase!

Then it’s off to steamy Shanghai and on to Hanghgzhou, reputedly the most beautiful city in China. The modern China, that is. I’ll expect noise, smog and glittering sky-scrapers alongside tranquil lakes, hills and pagodas.

During my travels I have rarely missed things other than the odd piece of chocolate or salty liquorice. Except for—on one memorable occasion—apples.

I was about to travel through Africa on my own. The group had split up and I was somewhere so utterly foreign that it may have well been on another planet, although one where people spoke French. I was wracked with longing for the rain-streaked streets of home, picturing myself sitting in the back of our old VW Beetle, behind both my parents, and staring out of the windscreen on our way back from town.

I had to forcefully remind myself that my father was dead. But the taste of apples remained in my mouth. We’d had a lot of apple trees in the garden. The shelves in our cellar were full of tiny, wrinkly apples that would last almost all year.

I pined for a while. But returning home was never an option. And one day, when I’d continued my journey, I found some strange berries on the market and bought a few of them, since I’ve always been curious about strange fruit.

I’ve never found these berries again. But I didn’t need to: the craving and the home sickness were gone.

And the morale of the story? Other than for a few pieces of salty liquorice I’m not in the habit of taking home comforts with me because the things you enjoy at home rarely taste right when you’re travelling. The craving for salty liquorice or the odd piece of chocolate is physical and fleeting. When I got my backpack stolen in Indonesia I didn’t miss my remaining liqs all that much. But when I went to Barcelona to do my TEFL certificate, I took teabags with me. I figured I needed them, and I was right.

They worked us hard and the tea gave me comfort, just as those berries once did.